Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday November 14, 2009 @08:13AM
from the vulcan-jesus-raises-an-eyebrow dept.

Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding its first ever conference on alien life, the discovery of which would have profound implications for the Catholic Church. For centuries, theologians have argued over what the existence of life elsewhere in the universe would mean for the Church. Among other things, extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God 'made man in his own image' and Jesus Christ's role as savior would be confused; would other worlds have their own Christ-figures, or would Earth's Christ be universal? Just as the Church eventually made accommodations after Copernicus and Galileo showed that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and when it belatedly accepted the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution, Catholic leaders say that alien life can be aligned with the Bible's teachings. 'Just as a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God,' says Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer at the Vatican Observatory and one of the organizers of the conference. Others do not agree. 'If you look back at the history of Christian debate on this, it divides into two camps. There are those that believe that it is human destiny to bring salvation to the aliens, and those who believe in multiple incarnations,' says Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist. 'The multiple incarnations is a heresy in Catholicism.'"

I don't think it is elegant at all. What is elegant are all the amazing bio-machines that have been built here on earth. When you can make something as efficient and reliable as a human heart, or a computer as complex as the human brain you can be as arrogant as you want. Until then I'm gonna have to believe we were designed like we were on purpose.

Whether or not I believe in invisible sky daddies, flying spaghetti monsters, invisible pink unicorns, or whatever, has zero affect on what does and does not happen within the realm of reality. What I believe may influence how I interact with that reality, but that is not the same thing as directly affecting that reality.

Gallileo was a scientist, who followed the evidence to his own conclusions. What you creationists are, is anti-scientists, and all you have to offer is a very long-winded and self-righteous "nu-uh!" to everything we know about biology, geology, cosmology, logic, and so on.

For entertainment, ask any worshippper of Abrahamic religion about the size and shape of God's penis (or Penis?;p ) and see how they struggle with the concept of their deity having such "unclean" part.

Also, ask them how existence of woman fits in (hint that their god might be a hermaphrodite)

take 500 random humans, put them on a desert island in isolation, and in a couple of dozen generations they will have an advanced religious mythology, definitely involving demigods if not a monotheism (and a couple of nonbelievers for good measure)

repeat this experiment, and you will get a different religious mythology, but you will still have a religious mythology

if you had a magic wand, and you waved it, and christianity, islam, judaism, hinduism, sikhism, etc. were magically stamped out, new religions wo

Well, if the universe would be running in a computer simulation, theres nothing stopping the simulator to hide all the information we would need from people. This is also true if there was a god.

I actually believe more in the computer simulator thing than there being some god. The argument that it would require a massive supercomputer to simulate everything on earth and universe also makes little next to none a valid argument, considering how fast we're generating and improving technology and that the calcu

There are actually reasons why the computer simulation seems unlikely, just as most definitions of a god seem unlikely.

However, the simplest answer to this is Occam's Razor. Which seems simpler: A universe with a god frantically hiding evidence of his existence, for some perverse reason? A universe running in a simulation? Or a universe which is simply material, in which there is no god?

Not sure why imaginging God would be the simplest answer to Mankind's questions about themselves. It actually seems sort of like an idiotic idea. "Huh, I'm alive. Clearly an invisible omnipotent creator made me, even though I've seen no other evidence." In my opinion, the "god is a simple answer for primitive people" stance is a straw man.

I did find it interesting in the summary that the Catholic priest was positing multiple creations on multiple earths, while the theoretical physicist was insisting that was heresy to Catholics. I think I'll trust the priest on what's heresy and what's not to Catholics.

While people like to bag on the Catholic church for its persecution of scientists hundreds of years ago, in its acceptance of evolution, and williningness to cnoser things like the role of alien life, it's actually among the most progressive religion around in the realm of the sciences. Unfortuntaley, that typically doesn't fit in with critics' political world-view, so it's conveniently ignored.

Not sure why imaginging God would be the simplest answer to Mankind's questions about themselves.

Imagine harder. You're a caveman. You have no idea about the low-level mechanisms behind life (including your own body). You have no idea how fire works, how trees grow, etc. You do know that you can carve objects that are more than they were before you started carving. You know that you can make fire, that you can make babies (with help) and maybe that you can make trees by planting seeds. You know that t

* "God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn."--Numbers 23:22
* "God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn."--Numbers 24:8
* "His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorn: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth."--Deuteronomy 33:17
* "Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?"--Job 39:9-12
* "Save me from the lion's mouth; for thou hast heard me from the horns of unicorn."--Psalm 22:21
* "He maketh them [the cedars of Lebanon] also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn."--Psalm 29:6
* "But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of the unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil."--Psalm 92:10
* "And the unicorn shall come down with them, and the bullocks with their bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness."--Isaiah 34:7

The translators of the Authorized King James Version of the Bible (1611) followed the Greek Septuagint (monokeros) and the Latin Vulgate (unicornus) and employed unicorn to translate re'em, providing a recognizable animal that was proverbial for its un-tamable nature.

You're implying that life, itself, is not entirely meaningless. It could very well be a meaningless computation. I propose that life itself is, in fact, 100% devoid of any inherit worth.

Now, hold on, put down your pitchfork and torches. I'm not advocating hedonism or "killing people 'cause their lives aren't worth anything." I said "inherit" worth. We, as a species, can attribute meaning into things. I wouldn't say "being alive is magical," as you would put it. Rather, I would say that we don't know what it's like to be anything other than alive. Thus, we can use the time we have to apply meaning of our own. Do what makes you happy, to a reasonable extent. Expand your mind. So what if your dream of constructing the largest scale model of The Taj Mahal using gum drops seems like a waste of time to someone else?

My basic point is, people search for meaning in life. That's why we have religion. We want to be given a purpose, a reason to get up in the morning instead of just putting a gun in our mouths and ending it. But "meaning" is a totally human created concept. As such, it cannot be found, only made. Thus, I feel any attempt to "find" meaning through spirituality is merely a false hope. People take it as the shortest route, but never truly arrive.

Um, just because it's magical doesn't mean you have to explain it with magic. If something has an unexplained behavior, the logical course of action is to influence it and make deductions based on the outcome. You use conscience as an example. Well there are degrees of awareness you know. There are the moments of torpor that leave you with little of it, and there are the adrenalin pumping moments that leave a heightened sense of existence. So already we know of a way to manipulate this magic, so I'm sure as technology improves we will understand it better.
A funny question posed in a philosophy debate is how do you know you experience conscience? What if you only had some mechanism that was inferior to conscience similar to the way some people can detect more variations in light qualia?

All these years later, we know so much about science and technology, but nothing about that feeling of being alive.

But what does it mean to feel alive? Is it our sense of self within our bodies, our emotions, our abilities to know how we fit into the world around us, our intelligence, our memories?

Whatever you choose, somewhere in the world there are people who do not have that attribute due to some disorder or injury. There are people who feel that their bodies (or parts of their bodies) do not belong to them. There are people who cannot feel emotions, or cannot connect with the rest of the world. Pick up any Oliver Sacks [oliversacks.com] book and you will find the stories a lots of people who lack some aspect of the "feeling of being alive".

These people are valuable to scientists, because by seeing how they are different to the rest of us they can understand what makes us who we are. Over the years, these scientists have created drugs to change our emotions and alter our perceptions & desires. They have studied how memories are formed and have even artificially created memories in animal brains.

I think that it is fair to say that science has made great advances in discovering what makes up human. They don't just sit back, scratch their heads and say that it is too hard for them.

You might say that all this takes the joy and magic out of life, but I say just sit back and enjoy the chemical reactions!

Early humans could feel their "aliveness" or "conscience" even before they could imagine math or science. They naturally assumed the simplest possible solution: some God who looks like them gave them a soul, which gives them this feeling of being alive. All these years later, we know so much about science and technology, but nothing about that feeling of being alive. It's there, and unexplained in any way so far. Without it, our lives would be simply meaningless computation. There's still some magic in the universe we need to explain. "no deity" as a refutation of the literal truth of the Bible is very logical. However, don't throw out the baby with the bath water - there is something magical about being alive, and cause to be "spiritual".

The "feeling of being alive" is just an illusion that simply arises out of enough meaningless computation.

Sure we don't fully understand the workings of the brain yet, but historically every time the workings of something is declared to be "magical" it is later found to have a mundane, rational explanation. Such as: The movements of the Sun and the Moon, contagious illnesses, the tides, the seasons, and on and on.

Consciousness is a product of our brains, and our brains operate within the laws of physics, th

I'm currently pondering a design for a system that uses genetic algorithms to evolve neural networks. Do I care what happens to the networks after a generation is up? Not really? At some point one may be found to perform its task at a level that would make the experiment a success. That one might get saved. The rest of them... not so much...

"All these years later, we know so much about science and technology, but nothing about that feeling of being alive. It's there, and unexplained in any way so far. Without it, our lives would be simply meaningless computation. There's still some magic in the universe we need to explain."

Unless the emotions you feel don't have any significance. Then we could write off the feeling of being alive as an instinctive response, without any bearing on the nature of the universe.

There are two possibilities: That your emotions are a reflection of some deeper spiritual meaning, or that they're simply instinctive responses that have evolved to help keep humans alive. Now, answer me truthfully: if your emotions had no spiritual connection, would you be able to tell?

There were plenty [wikipedia.org] of [wikipedia.org] people [wikipedia.org] from the time [wikipedia.org] of Jesus's death through many centuries [wikipedia.org] who denied or argued various aspects [wikipedia.org] of Jesus's humanity, divinity, status as a prophet [wikipedia.org] or the Messiah [wikipedia.org], and resurrection [wikipedia.org].
The current Bible canon is only a selection of the books that the Catholic Church decided were the right ones in the 16th century [wikipedia.org]. They also had to select one [wikipedia.org] of at least two [wikipedia.org] available manuscripts for what became the Old Testament. Other denominations [wikipedia.org] have other [wikipedia.org] canons [wikipedia.org]. There's a pile [wikipedia.org] of books [wikipedia.org] that are left out [wikipedia.org], and some which are left in [wikipedia.org] that have disputed [wikipedia.org] authorship. [wikipedia.org]
A lot of what's in the Bible is historically accurate, some percentage of it is repeated [wikipedia.org] and probably exaggerated, and there's a lot of stuff that was written in the same span of time (anywhere from 10 to 15 centuries) that isn't in there. You are glossing over so much history it's amazing. Just take a look at this one wikipedia page, if nothing else: The Bible and History [wikipedia.org].

Please explain how someone would "prove" anything that happened 2000 years ago without relying on the books that were written at the time.

You're both wrong -- you wouldn't prove it, in that you can't prove anything.

But your evidence is entirely within the pages of a single flawed book. Compare this to the evidence for other historical figures, like Julius Caesar, for example.

And IrquiM is right in that it is up to you to provide evidence, if you want your claims to be taken seriously. Otherwise, the correct default position is nonbelief -- not disbelief, simply nonbelief.

the bible is a compilation of the best preserved writings from that time,

Mostly because they are the writings religion wanted to preserve. Just look at the writings which were rejected by the Council of Nicaea.

That, and the fact that someone felt the need to forge an entry by Josephus doesn't exactly help your case.

generally accepted from a HISTORICAL pov as accurate.

Citation, please. From a historical perspective, the Bible is a work of fiction which borrows heavily from other traditions. The Jesus story in particular is borrowed from all kinds of stories repeated through the ages, and is almost a complete ripoff of the story of Horus. Here's a quick summary of Horus, stolen from the movie Religulous:

Written in 1280 BC, the Egyptian Book of the Dead describes a god, Horus, the son of the god Osiris, born to a virgin mother. He was baptized in a river by Anup the Baptizer, who was later beheaded. Like Jesus, Horus was tempted while alone in the desert, healed the sick, the blind, cast out demons, and walked on water. He raised Asar from the dead -- "Asar" translates to "Lazarus". Oh yeah, he also had 12 disciples. Yes, Horus was crucified first, and after 3 days, two women announced that Horus, the savior of humanity, had been resurrected.

Ignoring that, it's certainly one of the more self-contradictory accounts, and you have yet to answer Hume's challenge -- in order for testimony of a miracle to be believed, you must show that it would be more miraculous for the testimony to be wrong than for the event to have actually occurred.

Now, which seems more miraculous: That a man rose from the dead, or that the testimony was mistaken? Which seems more likely?

If it wasn't obvious before, it's obvious now that you have an agenda. I am not asking that you abandon it, but that you be aware of it as you read and respond, and try not to let it get in the way of an honest discussion.

Similarly, it is obvious (duh) that you have a set of beliefs. I am not asking that you abandon them, simply identify them and be willing to examine what it might imply if they were not true. At least try to envision the world from my point of view.

I have given you a few pieces of EVIDENCE of why I believe in the message of the Bible and in Jesus Christ.

Hmm... this time, the best you've given me is a link to a short web summary, which I then refuted. Is there anything else? Maybe this book:

There are others who have written thick books on the subject. Here is one of the better ones:

Sounds great! Can you quote a passage here, and save us both some time? I mean, it's obviously convincing to you...

Since it would take considerable investment on my part, I should like to know it would be worth the investment. A quick Google shows several critiques -- the most complete being Jeff Lowder's The Jury Is In -- The Ruling on McDowell's "Evidence" [infidels.org]. Interesting

I was under the assumption that no scientific theory can be proven with 100% certainty. Are you simply holding religious views to a higher standard than you hold your own?

Well, that's "by definition" one aspect of a scientific theory. You're right, because a scientific theory is a formulation of a model that maps to past observations, it can only ever be disproved, and never proved, as we don't rule out the possibility of as-of-yet unobserved irregularities that would disprove it.

The flaw in your comment is that you are comparing religious views to scientific theories.

While it may never be "proved", a more important aspect of a scientific theory is that it can be used to make predictions. And those predictions, if right, can serve to support it (and also give it some scientific value).
Take for instance Newton's gravity: at the time of its formulations, it was vastly sufficient for its applications, and useful to calculate projectile trajectories, etc. Then we started noticing that it fell short for certain applications, and Einstein's theory of relativity became a more accurate model for many uses. Now everybody knows that Einstein's theory of relativity isn't "correct", as some observations show. However, it's still very useful.

The predictive ability of a scientific theory is as close to "proof" as you get. Religious views cannot, and should not be compared to scientific theories. If certain beliefs make you happy, you are free to hold them, but if you want your beliefs to have any weight in society (for instance, policy or otherwise), I think it's reasonable that you be expected to show their value and how they may be rationally justified.

Wait a minute, are you one of those who consider ID to be a scientific theory?

Wrong. E=MC^2 is simple to deduce; read Einstein's Theory of Relativity, downloadable from Project Gutenberg. Special theory talks about dropping a ball from a moving train; general (the E=MC^2 one) talks about a man in a closed box with a string on the outside, and something pulling the string, and the forces the man experiences. The rest is just math, and fairly simple math at that.

Recent history (Abraham Lincoln) is documented in photographs, paintings, and newspapers.

More distant history is of course more difficult to ascertain. But saying that "religion relies on the same evidence as science" is ridiculous on the face of it. Thanks for playing.

(Hint: religion is not falsifiable; science is. What this means: science can say "here is something I want to disprove using what I've already learned; and here is an experiment that should disprove it, depending on the outcome of the experiment." Religion has no such utility; religion is always "close your mind to the abject reality around you, and substitute this one with a sky fairy where most people burn for eternity upon their death.")

Sure I could read a book and learn a lot more about E=MC^2. The point is, most of us don't. In fact, most people aren't scientists. What most of us rely on is exactly the same sort of authority that religion tends ot be based on. You are completely right that science is falsifiable, but I'm not talking about what the scientists do, I'm talking about what normal people actually do in their day to day lives. I am probably never going to learn more about why E=MC^2 because it isn't my field and I don't have ti

And yet we continually believe the "questionable testimonies" of people for almost all of our other knowledge.

No we don't. Where did you get that idea?

How do you know E=MC^2? Did you figure it out yourself, or did someone in authority tell you it was true?

When you study physics, you're taught both how theories have been developed and how you can test them for yourself. Thus you can eventually, when you get far enough in your studies, both understand E=MC^2 and experiment yourself to see how the theory fits observations in reality.

How do we know Abraham Lincoln was a president of the US? Did you see him become president? Or did you rely on the authority of some written documents to tell you that he was? How do we know Julius Caesar was an emperor of Rome? Where you there or are you relying on documents the earliest of which come from around 1000AD?

Historical documents are studied and those doing so look for contradictions and try to establish the truth. If I was really interested in history, I could do that myself but most people are content relying on historians, if their conclusions are consistent and contradictions absent, it is likely that what they state is true. Maybe not with absolute certainty but with much higher certainty than anything claimed in religion.

How do you know that person A murdered person B even though you haven't found the murder weapon? Is it because you performed some scientific test to determine it or is it because the bag lady across the street and said she saw him enter the apartment just before it happened and the neighbor said he saw him leave with a bloody knife?

Forensic science and testimonies constitute the process of trying to convince a jury of a certain chain of events having taken place. An explanation of what the methods show is of course also part of the trial. Some absolute certainty about what actually happened might not be within reach, which is why a guilty verdict only requires proof "beyond reasonable doubt".

Religion has all the evidence that everything else we rely on has.

No, that's precisely what religion doesn't have. Religion is based on accounts and documents that believers don't permit you to question. In science, questioning theories is precisely what is welcomed since it might lead to either better verification of the existing theories or new, better theories.

You simply make the assumption that religion is false and then you are able to deny the testimony of witnesses (by calling them suspect) simply because of your assumption.

Scientifically-minded people don't make that assumption directly. They only hold religion accountable to the same degree as any other proof of anything and religion fails to reach that level. Furthermore, when evidence that can be held accountable to that higher degree contradicts religious claims, it proves that at least those contradicting parts are false. The best example is probably the age of the earth. The process of carbon dating can be replicated over and over again so that anybody that doubts it, can verify how it works for themselves. The results carbon dating yields contradict religious accounts to such extent that it proves certain religious claims wrong. Inevitably, it might also lead people to doubt other claims made in religion.

Remove that assumption and the stories suddenly corroborate much more than is comfortable.

By "remove that assumption" you mean that proof in religion should be held to a lower standard than anywhere else and I'm quite curious to know why. Your logic is circular: "you're not allowed to question whether it is true since it is true".

You're missing the point. The point is normal people don't learn what the experts know. You COULD try to learn a lot more about the documents that tell us Julius Caesar existed, but you don't. You rely on authority. Furthermore, you believe that a bunch of documents written more than 1000 years after the supposed Julius Caesar died are telling the truth. The point is, why do you believe these documents and refuse to believe that people writing only 100-200 years after an even are telling the truth? What rea

When I tell a scientist that E=MC^2 is wrong and I prove it using the same standards for proof used for forming his original opinion, he will believe me, hail me, and probably proclaim me to be the greatest scientist ever.

When I tell a religious person that his god does not exist and that actually I am God and I prove it using the same standards for proof used for forming his original opinion (ie. someone told him) I will be laughed at. If I am lucky. In some parts of the world it is questionable if I would

Let me ask you this. In the Old Testament, this God feller was pretty active: he created he world in six days, then stopped for a smoke break. He committed genocide against several populations, slaughtered all the people on the planet save one family, smashed cities, parted seas, turned women into condiments, etc. In the New Testament, Sky Daddy still made himself obvious. He raped young virgins, raised zombies, fed multitudes with a packet of crisps and a six-pack. But ever since his son said "Screw you guys; I'm going home," no more miracles, really-- nothing more convincing than Jesus tortillas, anyway.

Why? I don't recall any mention of this in the Bible. He never said, "oh hey, by the way, I'm going to be out golfing for the next couple thousand years. Try not to slaughter yourselves."

What science has that religion does not is falsifiability, and a vastly greater degree of self-consistency.

How do you know E=MC^2? Did you figure it out yourself, or did someone in authority tell you it was true?

I did calculate it myself when I was a sophomore in college. The mathematics of it actually aren't all that hard.

How do we know Abraham Lincoln was a president of the US? Did you see him become president? Or did you rely on the authority of some written documents to tell you that he was?

As evidence we have written history, photographic evidence, copious reliable documentation, archaeological evidence, birth records, and much more - most of which is available for you to peruse yourself. There is even DNA evidence from known descendants. Furthermore there is not a single claim to a supernatural act in any of the above and I can tell you exactly what evidence would be needed to disprove the claim that he was President.

How do we know Julius Caesar was an emperor of Rome? Where you there or are you relying on documents the earliest of which come from around 1000AD?

See the above, minus the photographs and with fewer surviving records and other bits of evidence. Again, no supernatural claims exist with regard to the existence and historical record of Julius Caesar and I can tell you exactly what it would take to convince me that he was not actually the emperor of Rome.

How do you know that person A murdered person B even though you haven't found the murder weapon? Is it because you performed some scientific test to determine it or is it because the bag lady across the street and said she saw him enter the apartment just before it happened and the neighbor said he saw him leave with a bloody knife?

It depends on the nature of the evidence. If the "bag lady" also claims to have seen a ghost rising to heaven or some other supernatural act, her credibility is rightly going to be suspect. Witnesses alone are rarely enough to convict someone of a capital crime.

Religion has all the evidence that everything else we rely on has.

WRONG. Religion makes no falsifiable claims. There is no way I can disprove the assertion that Jesus Christ was the son of "God". I can accept the assertion or not but I can not disprove it. Science and history actually do make falsifiable claims. I can find evidence to disprove a theory or a historical narrative. It might not be easy to do so but it is possible and I can tell you exactly what evidence I would need to disprove a scientific or historical theory. The worst abuses of religon come when historical fact is conflated with religious dogma. Much of the evidence from 2000 years ago is of course lost so it makes it easier for the charlatans who sell religion to dupe the unscrupulous and naive.

“Fifty percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen more – with lakes. So UFOs tend to stick to the water,” he said.

On one occasion a nuclear submarine, which was on a combat mission in the Pacific Ocean, detected six unknown objects. After the crew failed to leave behind their pursuers by maneuvering, the captain ordered to surface. The objects followed suit, took to the air, and flew away.

“On several occasions the instruments gave reading of material objects moving at incredible speed. Calculations showed speeds of about 230 knots, of 400 kph. Speeding so fast is a challenge even on the surface. But water resistance is much higher. It was like the objects defied the laws of physics. There’s only one explanation: the creatures who built them far surpass us in development,” Beketov said.

“Ocean UFOs often show up wherever our or NATO’s fleets concentrate. Near Bahamas, Bermudas, Puerto Rico. They are most often seen in the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, in the southern part of the Bermuda Triangle, and also in the Caribbean Sea.”

Another place where people often report UFO encounters is Russia’s Lake Baikal, the deepest fresh water body in the world. Fishermen tell of powerful lights coming from the deep and objects flying up from the water.“

I think about underwater bases and say: why not? Nothing should be discarded,” says Vladimir Azhazha. “Skepticism is the easiest way: believe nothing, do nothing. People rarely visit great depths. So it’s very important to analyze what they encounter there.”

To paraphrase your argument: "Everything must have a cause except the thing that doesn't need a cause."

1) Why are you satisfied by calling the uncaused cause God? Why can't you define the Universe to include the uncaused cause and accept that not all effects have identifiable causes?

2) If you do decide to call the uncaused cause God, how do you jump from that to believing that God cares about you and listens to your prayers? Wouldn't that be like the flames of a forest fire praying to the lightning bolt that started the fire? Is the lightning bolt watching over His creation and deciding which flames get a happy afterlife?

3) Mathematically, you can have a function with periodic boundaries that depends only on itself without a beginning or end. If the Universe is mathematical and time is a characteristic of the Universe (not a supernatural clock existing outside the Universe), then the Universe could exist in a self-consistent state without any need for a beginning. Time is an illusion experienced by hunks of matter present within the Universe. The Universe, including all of time and all possible states, simply exists.

4) If you argue that what I have just describe as the Universe is actually God, then we need to have a long discussion about Baptism, Communion, Marriage, Sin, Heaven, and Hell.

It's rather trivial to "prove" any random claim when you don't have to bother with the same rigorous criteria for what constitutes valid proof.

Thus, religions appear to have lots of "answers" that science doesn't have. Of course, unlike science, no one - even within the same religion - can come to agreement about the details of those answers, just that they're there.

You say it yourself: it's their word against ours. You are assuming quite a bit: that they aren't lying, that these Gospel accounts weren't just made up, that they weren't tricked, etc. All of these explanations are much more plausible than someone actually rising from the dead after 3 days.

When you watch a magician performing pulling a rabbit out of his hat or sawing a girl in half, do you first assume that he's really doing magic? Why not? Of course not, you assume that it's a trick. Why? Because you kn

'Cause that would seem to be an important preliminary to your definition of science?

The problem: existence is the thing that *everything that *exists has in common, and scientific articulation of its meaning would require a comparison between the things that do and don't exist. Which comparison it cannot make, because as you rightly point out scientific inquiry cannot be made into non-existent things.

btw the 'which' in "things which don't exist" is a funny word misusage in this context -- do you see why?

Well, science, scientific method, certainly aims to determine that something has happened (or haven't). That something was present...or wasn't. Yes, "as far as we can tell", but determination of existence is at the heart of experimentation. it has very specific standards.

Religions...don't give you anything above blank state. For starters, which dogmas should you follow? Surely "my parents followed it" isn't ANY indicator of corectness of this one particular myth, right?

Not that it stops people from believing it with extreme fervor. I view the most common problem with religion as the fact that there are so many of them. And all of them are held to be absolutely, 100% true and most often, entirely exclusionary. "My God exists, and is the only god. Any other gods are a blasphemy" and all that.

Why is it that, supposing that there is one true faith with a set of predetermined moral values that do not change, just hypothetically, this faith is not the clear winner? Does God, often depicted as being omnipotent and all knowing, merely have the worst PR department in history? He has the opportunity to rig the greatest advertising campaign in the history of the universe, and still there are hundreds of copycats, knock offs, and competitors that are doing just as well, if not better?

To me, a much easier explanation would be that people rarely question the beliefs imposed on them in their adolescence, which would also explain why, up until globalization, faith was almost always easily determined by location.

'Cause that would seem to be an important preliminary to your definition of science?

The problem: existence is the thing that *everything that *exists has in common, and scientific articulation of its meaning would require a comparison between the things that do and don't exist. Which comparison it cannot make, because as you rightly point out scientific inquiry cannot be made into non-existent things.

btw the 'which' in "things which don't exist" is a funny word misusage in this context -- do you see why?

That's just silly. A 3,000 meter tall solid gold badger watching over Madison Wisconsin doesn't exist. We can easily compare it to a small ceramic badger from the University of Wisconsin gift shop that in fact does exist. Now, there is no logical reason that the giant golden badger cannot exist, it just doesn't. However, a square with only 3 sides does not exist anywhere in the universe, because it is logically impossible for such a thing to exist. It is easy to compare this with an equilateral triangle which in fact might exist, or one that does exist.

This is related to the history of argument about the existence of God. Thomas Aquinas made a similar distinction between things which exist and things which don't exist, things which cannot exist and things which just happen not to exist. In this ontological argument he attempts to prove that God logically must exist.

To be precise, a square with 3 sides does not exist, because we have DEFINED a square to have 4 sides. But a square itself doesn't exist either. You don't walk down the street or through the park and say "look, a square". A square is a pure mathematical ideal, and exists as such only in our heads.

I'm no mathematician, but from a layman's perspective mathematic "proof" is always quasi-tautological. All you're doing is unpacking the meaning of known mathematical or numeric terms. Which isn't just a waste of time, 'cause sometimes one of the things you unpack is another known term that you didn't realize would come out of the original one(s).

"there's nothing more to life that what you can analyze scientifically" seems like an overreach to me, like saying that the terms of mathematical system X are the

We need money to build an interstellar cruiser. Now, this space ship will be able to travel through a wormhole and deliver the message and guh-glory of Jesus Christ to those godless aliens.S-send your money now. Amen.

As a Catholic, I have a bit of a problem with this being filed under "humor". Yes, yes, most religious questions are a big joke to/. editors and posters (Cf. parent), but when institutions look as these low-level problems they frequently havea) a faction that gets it really wrong and embarasses the institution; andb) a faction that gets it right (or close) and enriches the institution

"what are the ramifications if there are nonhuman beings who experience conscience and guilt?" is a fascinating question, just like

"what are the ramifications if the earth goes 'round the sun"

"what are the ramifications if indigenous people are fully human and have as much God-given dignity as Western Europeans?"

I don't know if AC's get notifications when someone responds, but I'll recommend a couple of SF books by Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow and Children of God. In the first, extraterrestrial life is discovered, and the Jesuits have a plan! She deals deeply with the question of whether non-humans have souls, etc.

Typically these questions are patently absurd, such as the ones you mention. The fact there there is a debate in the Catholic Church about something at all is typically a good indicator that the vast majority of the world has already recognized the truth. For example, your examples.

No, because the universe is so fucking huge that the probability of aliens visiting Earth or humans visiting Rsdflkjasd is zero.

And if near instantaneous travel is discovered? Technology in 2000 years will be unrecognizable to us. I wouldn't make that bet. Also, maybe we've been visited but we weren't interesting or habitable for visitors. Assume visitors would only be interested if we have technology. Human technology of any value we appreciate has only been in existence for a very narrow slice of time--se

Given that *any* manifestation of the technology to do that would require harnessing massively amazingly awesome amounts of energy, if by some miracle it is discovered, I'm pretty sure it will be used to vaporize every creature on this rock before we go to an alien planet and GPs assertion holds on us going to Wwerqwdsrf.

OTOH, I'm pretty sure we were visited. Once. Those guys went back and made sure everyone in all nearby galaxies knows that we're the Alabama of the quadrant. Now they just watch us from beh

It doesn't need to be all driven by dishonesty. There may be also the sheer intellectual interest in knowing what follows from a body of doctrine once you add an extra ingredient. It's surely idle -for non-believers, I mean- but it may be an honest piece of harmless fun.

When religion and scientific evidence are in direct conflict with each other, enlightened people accept the scientific evidence. Enlightened religious people accept the scientific evidence and try to find ways to resolve it so that their religion remains logically consistent. (Yes, sometimes jumping through hoops to do so, but at least they don't look at scientists as some kind of evil tricksters or conspirators.)

The dumb ones, though, continue to argue against the scientific evidence not because of any particular keen insight, but because of what they think they know about an invisible guy who reigns supreme and, for the most part, what a two-thousand-year-old book that was written in an ancient language by ancient people and interpreted through various political and theological lenses says.

And, of course, most modern religions (and in particular, most modern people pushing it) are out there trying to convince people that if you question their interpretation of the "facts," that you'll burn in hell for eternity.

The church shouldn't even be having this argument. Science points towards an almost certainty of intelligent alien life out there, even if we never meet it face-to-face. They need to resign themselves to the fact that it exists, and adjust their thought accordingly. A biblical reference to the "four corners of the earth" doesn't mean that the earth literally has four corners (i.e. it's flat). A biblical reference to God making man in his own image doesn't mean that the god they worship literally looks like we do.

Duh.

As for the whole Christ thing, well, I'm guessing that alien cultures probably have their own religions, and some of them are probably even more interesting than ours. If we ever do have the pleasure of meeting some of them, we'll probably do what we've done throughout our entire history of existence. Figure out some way to meld them together to make ourselves feel better about ourselves and go on with life.

Santa Claus never brought anyone wars, pestilence or childhood leukemia. Nor did he ever send anyone to suffer torment in Hell for eternity for disobeying their parents or coveting their neighbor's wife.

It's not as ridiculous as you think because if you're an intelligent alien life form and you want to eventually reveal yourself publicly to the world, who would you want to contact first? Besides political leaders and military leaders, it has to be the highest religious authorities because such a revelation would cause a gigantic shock in the belief system of the locals living on that planet. As such, I would not be surprised if the extraterrestrials may have been quietly communicating with the likes of the

The catholic church could deal with the multiple species thing where other species look different, from other planets, by simple acknowledge that God has many forms and can take the form of many different species which represents different aspects and characteristics of god. God can be seen as life itself , the consciouisness and soul in all living things, the world arises from this infinite consciousness from its infinite potential to create reality. So in a sense we are living in our own collective dream.

Current Catholic theology is the result of about 1500 years where some of the most powerful minds of occident contributed to build a quite solid intellectual building. It might be based on nonsenses but still it's internal coherence and its resistance to foreign attacks is quite good.

"extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God 'made man in his own image'"

Surely it would be a problem for those too literalist (the ones that really believe the universe was built in six days, Noah's ark, Metusellah living 600 years, etc.) but for Catholics, God's image has nothing to be with having two arms or five and two heads or breathing liquid methane; it's about self identity and the thought of our own transcendence so probably any intelligent alien (non self-concious non-intelligent alien life pose no problem) would still fit the definition.

"Jesus Christ's role as savior would be confused"

Minor problem: Rome would say that each intelligent species would take its own path towards or against salvation and that's all. Regarding the heaven chores (angels and all that stuff) they are both real things and methapores of the relationship with divinity and you are done.

"would other worlds have their own Christ-figures, or would Earth's Christ be universal?"

Both stanzas are true at the same time. Literally that would be no problem for Catholic church, after all its God is one and three at the same time; logically it's still not a big problem: the path to redemption (or the lack of) would be tied to the local History of those aliens; they either don't need redeption (rationally that could be the case, of course I don't think Rome would accept that; they would be out of job), or they found their own path or they came to know about us so they can learn about Christ and share our own redemption (they know *now* that Christ did die for them to so their souls can be saved etc.).

"says Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer "

Of course, it had to be a Jesuit. Quite clever folks, those Jesuits.

"The multiple incarnations is a heresy in Catholicism"

Yes. But since God is uber-everything (almighty, omniscient...) it's easy to acomodate the idea that there are a lot of different ways for a mere mortal to be made in God's image (and even real reincarnations might be accepted by Catholics if aliens are involved; they'd just say that it's no "real" incarnation but kind of larval state: just as a worm and a butterfly seem very different but they still are the same individual you might incarnate on an alien or the other way around and still being accepted as being the same individual -that wouldn't be too hard a problem for Catholics: Christ showed us there was live beyond human death, etc.).

Being raised Catholic, I questioned the idea of alien life. My priest got a little bit exasperated at times, but he sat and explained the catechism to me, and there is no problem with accepting aliens. Further, the Church would not necessarily even want or need to convert them, regardless of their religion.

Christianity holds that man fell from grace in the Garden of Eden, where he was tricked into consuming fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, against God's commandment. If He created an alien species, then they may have never been exposed to the concept, or they may have followed His commandment. Having never fallen from grace, they would have no need for a savior, and therefore no Jesus Christ.

As the parent said - the premises may be flawed, but Catholic Catechism is quite internally consistent.

Since he has no body, so what is meant by "created in his image" is more to do with our sentience, consciousness and knowledge of good and evil. This is how we are like him. Kind of like if we were to create a sentient program, who is "in our image" but looks like a computer.

I've encountered people who think that the discovery of intelligent alien life would completely upset the apple cart of Christianity, "proving" that it was all a bunch of hogwash. But it wouldn't. There's nothing anywhere in Genesis that says that there are no other "people", and it's not as if this would be the first time that a New World was discovered. To be sure, there'd be some challenging theological questions to wrestle with, such as whether the Original Sin of Eve tainted their world, or some anc

"Just as a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God."

I am agnostic, and I have no problem with this line of reasoning. The presence of aliens neither proves nor disproves the existence of God, from a philosophical point of view. The 'smart' religion is the adaptable one. If you want to keep your followers and expand your base, you need to keep your belief systems up-to-date. This is a very smart thing for the Catholic church to do. Now

The Catholics should start with dolphins, who are arguably as intelligent as humans, but not tool users, and alien in their thought processes and communications mode. Frankly chimps are close enough to at least spark a debate.

And what of lawyers and politicians? Do they *have* souls? Is it possible?

If you look back at the history of Christian debate on this, it divides into two camps. There are those that believe that it is human destiny to bring salvation to the aliens, and those who believe in multiple incarnations

What about the possibility that alien species have not Fallen or suffered from Original Sin?

It's been 425 years since Bruno argued in De l'Infinito, Universo e Mondi [altervista.org] (Italian; use Google translate) that the universe was infinite and contained innumerable stars, with countless planets around them, some containing life.

He was pretty far ahead of his time... far enough ahead that in 1600 the Church had him burned at the stake. Good to see they're getting round to considering his ideas, albeit a little bit belatedly.

Except, of course, he wasn't burned at the stake for anything to do with an infinite universe or aliens... From what I can read on Wikipedia it had to do with public heresy none of which seem directly related to anything scientific. Also, the Catholic Church did not execute them, the secular authorities did, against the advice of the Church.

I'm not saying it's a particurally glorious moment in the history of the Church, but a march against science isn't what it was.

A march against reason is a march against science. And, wow, you must not be reading the same Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] as I am. It is very clear that the church was the murderer, and after seven years of holding him captive and threatening him, they then used the state as the gun.

Fuck the church. It should be destroyed like it destroyed so many countless innocents.

Nazis were neither secular nor godless. Communists are typically godless, but not secular. Also, I think you mean the 20th century. There weren't any communist states until the beginning of the 20th century, and the Nazi party didn't exist until around the end of the first world war.

If they tought that God were almighty and everywhere, they could still think that, just put up several orders of magnitude how much powerful must be. And, of course, stop thinking on it as an human form.

Or go to Clarke's law for religion, any sufficiently powerful entity is indistinguishable from God and redefine that we had just one, not "the" god in universal scale.

The holy book heads' battle with science a.k.a. lucency a.k.a. anti-brainwash a.k.a. non-bullshit is much akin to a talking monkey trying to explain the passing of seasons as somehow being ultimately tied to the taste of bananas.

They're just so funny!

Except, of course, when they go postal with the crusading, and the suicide bombing, and the child molestation, and the... Ah well, maybe it's not so funn

The Catholics need not confront alien life issues at all. The idea that God's truth had to be delivered to the population of this world in such a way that they could understand and make use of it is sufficient. Can any of us imagine a Holy book being delivered two thousand years ago that babbled about relativity, the Higg"s Boson or multi dimensional universes?
We can trust that the message has been delivered to others in a format that they can both understand and make use of.

Or maybe someone on this other planet 2,000 thousand years ago compiled a bunch of thousand-year-old stories and attributed the result to the creator of the Universe. Then over the next 500 years or so a group of people schemed to get to the top of their society by carefully editing the stories, leaving out whole books of it and only including what they could use. Then they controlled their world for the next 1,000 years or so by using careful doses of applying the resulting book and torturing and killing people who disagreed with them. Then some people finally started waking up and learning to think for themselves and maybe the original people who were oppressed by the holders of the book have now ascended to the top of the societal pyramid and are terrified of not having oppressors and tyrants telling them what to do, so they vote and influence policy to try and force everybody under the rule of that original book again, which in the meantime has lost all of its meaning and can be interpreted to mean anything at all. Just saying. This is just the kind of thing that could happen on an alien world in a bad Sci Fi plot, isn't it?

Christians, please be aware that the intergalactic god, Zul-9 is the "one and only God". The alien crusaders are coming to spread the Word of the Great God Zul-9, and they want your churches, cathedrals and your women.

And if you silly Christians want "proof" that Zul-9 is the only God, then you can read it for yourself in the Biblio Galactica -- where it's written in clear, concise Zorgox "There is no God but Zul-9. All other gods are His sexual playthings -- until he eats them like crumpets with his afternoon tea."

Any evidence that the Cathoilc church attempts to put forward in an effort to discredit Zul-9 are words of the Devil (The evil "Byxaplaximax") and are but mere examples of obfuscation used by the Forces of Evil to cloud the One True Word of Zul-9. (It is common knowledge that the entire Bible was penned by an incredibly drunk Byxaplaximax in a weak effort to stifle Zul-9.)

To any Catholics who suddenly believe that their god may have created life elsewhere in the Universe, Zul-9 has proclaimed the following words: "Jesus H. Christ, stop trying to change up your stodgy little screed to encompass new scientific data which clearly disproves your stodgy little screed. There is no god but me, and you should know that because I've already buggered and devoured your god and he needed salt." (From the Book of the Book of St. Pogax-7).

And if there are any Catholics who cling to their religion in spite of the overwhelming evidence that they are uneducated monkeys, Zul-9 would like to remind these unbelievers that they have to "have faith".

I would beg to differ. Several top [about.com] Google [gloria.tv] hits [freerepublic.com] suggest that they are growing, but at a rate less [encyclopedia.com] than the world population. Thus, as a percentage of world population, Catholocism is shrinking, but it's still growing in numbers. People are not, as you suggest, leaving it in droves.

Another great statistic I just found was that an average of 171,000 [about.com] Christians are "martyred" for their faith every year. That's pretty wild! I'd make a joke about some well-fed Roman lions, but that would be in very poor taste.

How is the parent off topic? Christianity does not teach that being made in Christ's image means looking physically similar to Christ. It shows a lack of understanding in the announcement of one of the basic tenants of Christianity. It seems that the the modding down of the parent is due to an inherent bias among/. users. Sadly, things like this are slowly forcing me off/.